HOW CAN A WOMAN GIVE BIRTH TO ONE GREEK AND ONE MACEDONIAN?

THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AMONG IMMIGRANTS TO
AUSTRALIA FROM NORTHERN GREECE

Loring M. Danforth

Acknowledgments:
The research on
which this essay is based was carried out in Melbourne, Australia in 1991-92
and was generously supported by a Fulbright Scholar Award. I would like
to express my appreciation to the members of the Department of Anthropology
at the University of Melbourne for their kind hospitality. I would also
like to thank the many people from Florina living in Melbourne who were
willing to talk with me about the complex and emotionally-charged issue
of national identity and the Macedonian conflict. A grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to spend the 1992-93 academic year
working on the larger project of which this essay is part, a book tentatively
entitled The
Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World.
Finally, I would like to thank several colleagues whose friendship, encouragement,
and constructive criticism I value very highly: Victor Friedman, Michael
Herzfeld, Gregory Jusdanis, Roger Just, Anastasia Karakasidou, and Riki
Van Boeschoten.

Loring M. Danforth is professor of anthropology at
Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and the author of The Death Rituals
of Rural Greece and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The
Anastenaria of Northern Greece and the American Firewalking Movement
(both published by Princeton University Press).

ABSTRACT

The construction of national identity at the individual
level is a phenomenon that has not been adequately addressed by recent
work on ethnic nationalism. I attempt to remedy this situation by examining
the case of immigrants from northern Greece to Australia who share a common
regional or ethnic identity as "local Macedonians" but who have been forced
to chose between two different and mutually exclusive national identities
- Greek and Macedonian - as a result of the recent politicization of the
Macedonian conflict. In my analysis of the indigenous theories of identity
used by immigrants from northern Greece to Australia as they argue about
what nationality they really are, I hope to move beyond oversimplified
nationalist rhetoric dealing with immutable biological essences and arrive
at a deeper understanding of the complex historical, political, and cultural
processes by which individuals construct and negotiate the identities that
give meaning to their lives. [national identity, nationalist ideology,
Macedonia, Greece, Australia]

Most scholarly work on ethnic nationalism has focused
on the construction of national identity as a large-scale collective phenomenon
and as a long-term historical process. It has not paid sufficient attention
to the construction of national identity as a short-term biographical process
that takes place over the course of the life-time of specific individuals.
For this reason, as Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out (1990:78), much too little
is known about people's 'thoughts and feelings towards the nationalities
and nation-states which claim their loyalties."

any important questions are raised by focusing attention
on the construction of national identity at the individual level. How do
people develop a sense of national identity? How do they choose a national
identity when more than one possibility is available to them? How is this
identity transmitted from one generation to the next? How and why do people
change their national identity? Finally, how is it possible for residents
of the same village and even members of the same family to adopt different
national identities.

In this paper I explore these questions through an
analysis of the indigenous theories of identity used by people from the
region of Florina in northern Greece who have emigrated to Melbourne, Australia,
when they argue about whether they are Greeks or Macedonians. These people,
the majority of whom speak both Greek and Macedonian, share a common ethnic
identity: they are "local Macedonians."[1] However, as
a result of the recent intensification of the nationalist conflict between
Greeks and Macedonians over which group has the right to identify itself
as Macedonians, immigrants from Greek Macedonia to Australia have been
forced to make a difficult decision and adopt one of two mutually exclusive
national identities: they must chose whether to be Greeks or Macedonians.
What is more, they must do so in Australia, an explicitly multicultural
society where ethnic and national identity is more freely and self-consciously
constructed than it is in the nation-states of the Balkans with their claims
of national purity and homogeneity.

The Construction of National Identity

In nationalist ideologies the national identity of a
person is usually regarded as something permanent, innate, and immutable.
It is often thought to consist of some natural or spiritual essence which
is identified with a person's blood or soul. While generally avoiding such
overtly biological or spiritual metaphors, much anthropological writing
has held that people share a particular ethnic or national identity because
they possess certain cultural traits in common, because they share a common
culture. People are Greek, in other words, because they speak Greek, have
Greek names, and attend the Greek church.[2]

It was the work of Fredrik Barth (1969) that was
largely responsible for the rejection by many anthropologists of this essentialist
notion of ethnic, and by extension, national identity. Instead of defining
ethnic groups as "culture bearing units," groups whose members share a
common culture which distinguishes them from members of other groups, Barth
defined them as "categories of ascription and identification." According
to this approach the crucial feature of ethnic identity is "the characteristic
of self ascription and ascription by others" (1969:10-13). Barth's insights
make it possible to understand how the boundaries between ethnic and national
groups are able to persist despite the fact that people are constantly
flowing across them, how ethnic and national categories are maintained
despite the fact that membership in these categories is always changing.

Once the assertion of ethnic or national identity
is no longer equated with "belonging to" a particular culture or exhibiting
certain cultural traits, once it is understood as a form of political consciousness,
as an often explicit and self-conscious political choice, then we are in
a position to understand how separate groups with distinctly different
identities can exist even when there are no "objectivett cultural differences
that distinguish between them. Because the existence of these two groups
and of the boundary between them depends exclusively on the "subjective
experience of difference" (Sahlins 1989:270), it is possible for people
who share a common culture to adopt different ethnic or national identities.
Once we abandon the notion that adopting a particular identity is necessarily
the result of being a member of a certain culture, we can consider the
reverse: that being or becoming a member of a certain culture is rather
the result of adopting a particular identity. In other words, people may
~not in fact be Greek because they speak Greek, have Greek names, and attend
the Greek church. On the contrary, they may speak Greek (and not one of
the other languages they know), use the Greek (and not the Slavic) form
of their names, and attend the Greek (and not the Macedonian) church because
they are Greek, that is, because they have chosen to identify themselves
as Greek.

Barth's work also emphasizes the active role individuals
play in what are often highly contested struggles involving the creation
and distribution of new identities. While states with their powerful military,
educational, and ecclesiastical bureaucracies often attempt to impose national
identities from above, it is ultimately the individual who chooses what
national identity to adopt, or in some cases whether to adopt any national
identity at all. Such a situational approach to identity not only avoids
the problems associated with a reified and essentialist approach, in which
the assertion of a particular identity is equated with the possession of
some natural or spiritual essence, or even the possession of certain cultural
traits. It also draws attention to the fact that identity "is a socially
constructed, variable definition of self or other, whose existence and
meaning is continuously negotiated, revised and revitalized" (Nagel 1993:2).[3]

In a recent study entitled Ethnic Options: Choosing
Identities in America Mary Waters (1990) documents the fact that identities
often changes through time, both over the life cycle and across generations.
Parents may try to hide or deny a particular identity that their children
"rediscover" as they approach adulthood themselves. An identity may be
adopted if world political events give it enhanced prestige, or conversely
it may be shed if it becomes stigmatized. Often these changes in identity
are not perceived by the actors themselves as changes, but are seen as
the correction of an error or the achievement of a new insight that is
accurate in contrast to the earlier perception that was in error.

Given the common nationalist view of the immutability
of identity, conversion from one identity to another is bound to raise
serious questions of authenticity and legitimacy, for if national identity
is a fact of nature, something determined by blood or by birth, then it
is "unnatural," if not impossible, to change it. As Handler (1988:51) puts
it, from a nationalist perspective people "cannot choose what they naturally
are." The new identities people ascribe to themselves, therefore, are often
challenged or even rejected by others. This is particularly the true case
when national identity is manipulated in an obvious way to serve personal
self-interest (Sahlins 1989:223). When the construction of identity is
contested in this manner, the criteria people use to define their identity
and assess its legitimacy are often explicitly cited. Such arguments over
the relevance of various criteria for the determination of group membership
make the process of identity formation unusually accessible to anthropological
analysis.

A situational approach to identity, while taking
into consideration the role of personal choice in the process of identity
formation, must also remain sensitive to the role played by external factors
that limit or constrain the choices individuals face as they construct
the identities that shape their lives. For an identity formation is not
entirely a matter of self--ascription; it is a matter of ascription by
others as well. Identities are shaped or structured by powerful political,
economic, social, and cultural forces, the most important of which inevitably
involve the hegemonic power of the state. State policies, the ideologies
that legitimate them, and the institutions and organizations that realize
them, all influence the process of identity formation as individuals are
socialized and become citizens of particular states. To a great extent
states have the power and the resources to determine what choices are available
to people and what the rewards or the sanctions will be when they exercise
these choices and adopt specific identities.

The degree to which state hegemony constrains individual
choice in the construction of national identities varies tremendously.
At one end of the spectrum stand nation-states whose ideologies of national
homogeneity and ethnic purity lead them to limit quite narrowly the choices
available to their citizens. Despite the best efforts of a nation-state
to ensure that all its citizens develop one and the same national identity,
however, the hegemonic power of the state is never absolute. Some individuals
are always willing to endure severe persecution by asserting an identity
that defines them as members of an ethnic or national minority. At the
other end of the spectrum stand countries like the United States, Canada,
and Australia, whose democratic and pluralist ideologies place significantly
fewer constraints on the identities their citizens may adopt. In the case
of third or fourth generation immigrants from Europe the choice of identity
may become sufficiently fluid and free from stigma that one can begin to
speak of ethnicity as a "lifestyle choice" or a "matter of taste," something
to be adopted one day and discarded the next (Jusdanis nd:27).[4]

The construction of identity among immigrants from
nation-states in the Balkans who have settled in large pluralist democracies
is a particularly complex process because it is influenced by hegemonic
constructions that have their origins in both the countries where they
were born and the countries where they have settled. These immigrants bring
with them identities constructed in their homelands and face the challenge
of reconstructing them in the diaspora. From the perspective of these immigrants
themselves, particularly those whose identities were denied in their homelands,
the most salient feature of the politics of identity in the diaspora is
the fact that they now enjoy the freedom to express an identity which they
were unable to express freely before.[5]

For the purpose of understanding the role of diaspora
communities in the transnational conflict between Greeks and Macedonians,
it is precisely this point which is most relevant. While many groups experience
serious discrimination in the United States, Canada, and Australia, for
white immigrants from Europe full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship
in these countries is compatible with a fairly wide range of ethnic identities.
Immigrants who are members of national minorities in the Balkans, for example,
experience considerably more freedom to assert their identities in the
United States, Canada, and Australia than they do in their countries of
origin. More specifically, it is much easier to be a Macedonian in Australia
than it is in northern Greece. Macedonians in Australia acknowledge this
with their frequent expressions of gratitude and appreciation for the fact
that in Australia they enjoy the right to express freely their identity
as Macedonians. They often add with bitter irony that Macedonians in Greece,
the "birthplace of democracy," do not enjoy these same rights.

From an anthropological perspective, however, it
is clear that while Macedonians in Australia do enjoy a degree of freedom
with respect to the expression of their ethnic identity that is not available
to them in Greece, the choices facing them in Australia are certainly not
unlimited. They are constrained by a complex set of hegemonic forces that
have to do with both multicultural politics in Australia and nationalist
politics in the Balkans. From the perspective of the English-speaking majority
which dominates Australian society at all levels it makes very little difference
whether immigrants from northern Greece identify themselves as Greeks or
Macedonians. Regardless of their choice of identity at this level, however,
immigrants from northern Greece remain "Europeans," "ethnics," or "people
of non-English speaking background," as opposed to "real Australians."[6]

Immigrants from northern Greece to Australia, like
immigrants to Australia from anywhere else in the world, encounter constraints
in the process of constructing new identities for themselves in another
sense as well. Their choices are limited by the ethnic categories that
exist in the official discourse of Australian multiculturalism and that
dominate government bureaucracies, social service agencies, and the educational
system. Immigrants choose from among the many "ethnic communities" which
together constitute Australian society; they become members of the "Italian
community," the "Polish community," or the "Turkish community."

It should be immediately apparent that the ethnic
categories of Australian multicultural discourse replicate or reproduce
almost precisely the national categories of nationalist discourses throughout
the world. Immigrants from the Balkans to Australia have more freedom to
chose an identity than their fellow villagers they left behind, but the
choices they face are essentially the same. Whether they live in Australia
or the Balkans, they must be Serbs or Croats, Greeks or Macedonians.

The truth of Pellizzi's (1988:155) observation that
"in exile nations become ethnicities is confirmed by the parallels that
exist between the construction of national identities in the Balkans and
the construction of ethnic identities in Australia. The disintegration
of Yugoslavia and the emergence of Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian national
identities in the Balkans is part of the same transnational chain of events
that has led to the demise of the Yugoslav community in Australia and the
development there of Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian communities. The
hegemony of national categories of identity is such that even in multicultural
Australia they cannot be escaped. In Australia, as in northern Greece,
it is difficult for people to preserve or construct regional or ethnic
identities that have no counterpart at the national level. It is difficult
for them to resist becoming either Greek or Macedonian and to remain simply
"local Macedonians."

Any analysis of the process by which ethnic and national
identities are constructed at the individual level must also take into
consideration the fact that such identities are situational but that they
are also multiple. People have many collective identities each of which
may be relevant in different ways and at different times. While national
identity may be one of the broadest and most all-inclusive identities a
person has, it certainly does not exclude or even transcend in importance
other identities which define individuals as social beings (Hobsbawm 1990:11).
Local, regional, ethnic, national, and even transnational identities may
all coexist and together constitute important aspects of an individual's
overall identity, not to mention other forms of collective identity based
on religion, class, gender, or age. The precise nature of the relationships
among these different identities - whether they coexist without conflict
or whether they are mutually exclusive - varies greatly. For example, while
it may be politically acceptable to be both Greek and Australian, it may
not be politically acceptable to be both Greek and German.

One aspect of the construction of collective identities
that is central to the study of ethnic nationalism is the process by which
individuals who have previously defined themselves primarily in terms of
regional or ethnic identities often associated with rural villages, local
dialects, and oral cultures, come to acquire a sense of national identity
associated with "a literate high culture which is co-extensive with an
entire political unit and its total population" (GelIner 1983:95). Cultivating
a sense of national identity in people who previously did not have one
- turning "peasants into Frenchmen" (Weber 1976) -not to mention instilling
the "proper" national identity in people who have somehow managed to acquire
the "wrong" one, is the ultimate goal of all national movements. Needless
to say, it is a long, complex process that may take place peacefully or
violently, and that may destroy as many identities as it creates.

This is particularly true in the case of an ethnic
group that inhabits a frontier zone on the border between two nation-states,
each of which attempts to impose a different national identity on members
of the contested group. With the nationalization of ethnic identities and
the politicization of local cultures, a national identity develops like
a thin veneer on top of preexisting regional or ethnic identities. Gradually
the ethnic group whose territory is divided by a national boundary splits
as its members develop two different and mutually exclusive national identities.

For the local Macedonians from the region of Florina
in northern Greece this process, which had its beginnings in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, is still continuing in the 1990s both in
northern Greece as well as in diaspora communities in Canada and Australia.
Inhabitants of the same villages, members of the same families, who have
adopted different national identities, continue to argue about whether
they are Greeks or Macedonians. They continue to argue about what nationality
they really are.

The Macedonian Question in Balkan Historv

Macedonia is a vaguely defined geographical area in
the southern Balkans. It includes the territory of the Republic of Macedonia
(which prior to its declaration of independence in September, 1991 was
the southernmost republic in the former Yugoslavia) as well as territory
in southwestern Bulgaria and north-central Greece.

The Macedonian Question has dominated Balkan history
and politics for over a hundred years. During the Ottoman period, which
lasted in Macedonia from the fourteenth century until 1913, the population
of Macedonia included an amazing number of different ethnic, linguistic,
and religious groups, including Slavic and Greek speaking Christians, Turkish
and Albanian speaking Moslems, Vlachs, Jews, and Gypsies. Toward the end
of the nineteenth century the population of Macedonia was increasingly
being defined from various external nationalist perspectives in terms of
national categories such as Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, and Turks.
Ottoman authorities, however, continued to divide the population of the
empire into administrative units, or millets on the basis of religious
identity rather than language, ethnicity, or nationality.

The hegemony which the Greeks exercised over the
Orthodox Christian millet was seriously challenged for the first time by
the establishment of an independent Bulgarian Church in 1870. Orthodox
communities in the Macedonia now had the choice of affiliating with either
the Greek or the Bulgarian national church. This marked an intensification
of the "Macedonian Struggle" in which Greek, Bulgarian, and to a lesser
extent Serbian, irredentist claims came into conflict over who would gain
control over the people and the territory of Macedonia. By the 1890s the
three Balkan states were all fielding irregular bands of guerrilla fighters
who attacked the Turks, fought each other, and terrorized the local population.
In addition, through the construction of churches and schools and the assignment
of priests and teachers each state was conducting an intense propaganda
campaign, whose goal was to instill the "proper" sense of national identity
among the Orthodox Christians of Macedonia. The Macedonian Struggle reached
its climax in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, which ended with the partitioning
of Macedonia among Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia (later Yugoslavia).

Since 1913 the fates of the Slavic-speaking inhabitants
of Bulgarian (Pirin) Macedonia, Greek (Aegean) Macedonia, and Yugoslav
(Vardar) Macedonia have varied considerably. With the exception of a brief
period following World War II the Bulgarian government has officially denied
the existence of a Macedonian nation, arguing instead that all the Slavs
of Macedonia are Bulgarians. Since that time its policy toward the Macedonians
in Bulgaria has been one of forced assimilation into mainstream Bulgarian
society.

The Greek government has also consistently denied
the existence of both a Macedonian nation and a Macedonian minority in
northern Greece and has adopted a policy of forced assimilation toward
he Slavic-speaking inhabitants of Greek Macedonia. After 1913 all Slavic
personal and place names were Hellenized, and all evidence of the existence
of Slavic literacy was destroyed. As a result of the population exchanges
which took place between Greece and Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey in the
1920s, the number of people in Greek Macedonia who had a sense of Greek
national identity increased substantially.

Under the Metaxas dictatorship of 1936-40 repression
of the Slavic speakers, who by this time had increasingly begun to identify
themselves as Macedonians, was particularly severe: people who spoke Macedonian
were beaten, fined, and imprisoned. After the Greek Civil War (1946-49),
in which many Macedonians supported the unsuccessful Communist cause, some
35,000 Macedonians fled (or were forced to flee) to Yugoslavia and other
countries in eastern Europe (Kofos 1964:186). In the decades that followed,
conservative Greek governments continued this policy of persecution and
assimilation, perhaps the most egregious examples of which were the "language
oaths" administered in several Macedonian villages, which required Macedonians
to swear that they would renounce their "Slavic dialect" and from then
on speak only Greek (Pribichevich 1982:246).

Until World War II the official Serbian (and Yugoslav)
position was that the Slavs of Macedonia did not constitute a distinct
ethnic or national group, but that they were all "South Serbs." On August
2, 1944, however, Tito and the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
established the People's Republic of Macedonia with its capital of Skopje
as one of the states of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At this
time the existence of a Macedonian nation was officially recognized. By
1950 a standard literary Macedonian language had been developed, and in
1967 an autonomous Macedonian Orthodox Church was established. In this
way Macedonians achieved a significant degree of cultural autonomy, even
if they failed to achieve complete national independence.

With the death of Tito in 1980, the constraints which
the central Yugoslav government had placed on the expression of Macedonian
nationalism were gradually loosened. As Yugoslavia finally began to collapse
in the early 1990s, the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia, in a referendum
held on September 8, 1991, voted overwhelmingly in favor of initiating
the process of establishing a completely sovereign and independent Macedonian
state.

The fledgling state of Macedonia, however, faced
a difficult struggle for international recognition because of the fierce
opposition mounted by Greece to what Greeks claim to be the misappropriation
by a Slavic pe6ple of the name Macedonia, a name that "was, is, and always
will be Greek." At the insistence of Greece, therefore, in December, 1991,
the European Community stated that it would not recognize the Republic
of Macedonia until it guaranteed that it had no territorial claims against
any neighboring state and that it would not engage in hostile acts against
any such state, including the use of a name which implied territorial claims.
After the Macedonian government provided constitutional guarantees that
it would respect the inviolability of all international borders and refrain
from interfering in the internal affairs of other states, an EC Arbitration
Commission found that Macedonia fulfilled all conditions for recognition.
In addition, it specifically stated that the use of the name "Macedonia"
did not imply territorial claims toward a neighboring state. In spite of
this, however, in January, 1992, at the insistence of Greece the European
Community refused to recognize the Republic of Macedonia.

During this period an incredible variety of alternative
names were proposed for Macedonia. Officially the Greek government refused
to accept any name for the Republic which included the word "Macedonia"
in any form whether "as a noun or as an adjectival modifier." Proposed
solutions to the dilemma ranged from names like Dardania and Paeonia (used
in antiquity to designate regions to the north of ancient Macedonia), to
names like South Slavia, the Vardar Republic, the Central Balkan Republic,
and the Republic of Skopje, all of which were acceptable to Greece. Other
compromise solutions, which were not acceptable to Greece, included Northern
Macedonia, New Macedonia, and the Slavic Republic of Macedonia. At one
point Greece even suggested that the Republic adopt two names, one official
name for external use (which could not include the word "Macedonia") and
one unofficial name for internal consumption (which could include the word
"Macedonia"). All these solutions, however, were rejected by the Republic
itself, which insisted that it would only accept recognition under its
constitutional name: the Republic of Macedonia.

In December, 1992, the dispute shifted from the capitals
of the member states of the European Community to New York City, when the
Republic of Macedonia applied for admission to the United Nations. The
governments of both Greece and Macedonia were ready to compromise when
a plan was proposed according to which the Republic would be admitted to
the United Nations under the temporary or provisional name "the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," with a permanent name to be chosen later
through a process of mediation. In April, 1993, the Security Council voted
unanimously to admit "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" as a member
of the United Nations. The Republic, however, was not allowed to fly its
flag, the sixteen-ray sun or star of Vergina, at the United Nations headquarters
because this was an ancient Macedonians symbol (which was found in Greece)
and is therefore a Greek national symbol.

Finally, in December, 1993, just before Greece was
to assume the rotating presidency of the European Community, six members
of the European Community - Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark,
and the Netherlands - decided to recognize the Republic of Macedonia and
establish full diplomatic relations with it. When the United States and
Australia recognized the Republic in February, 1994, Greece responded by
imposing an economic blockade against the Republic, a move that evoked
widespread condemnation and prompted the other members of what was now
the European Union to bring Greece before the European Court of Justice
on charges of having violated European Union trade rules.[7]

Competing Claims to Macedonian Identity

According to the Greek nationalist position on the Macedonian
Question, because Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians were
Greeks, and because ancient and modern Greece are bound in an unbroken
line of racial and cultural continuity, it is only Greeks who have the
right to identify themselves as Macedonians, not the Slavs of southern
Yugoslavia, who settled in Macedonia in the sixth century AD and who called
themselves "Bulgarians" until 1944.[8] Greeks, therefore,
generally refer to Macedonians as "Skopians," (from Skopje, the capital
of the Republic of Macedonia) a practice comparable to calling Greeks "Athenians."
The negation of Macedonian identity in Greek nationalist ideology focuses
on three main points: the existence of a Macedonian nation, a Macedonian
language, and a Macedonian minority in Greece. From the Greek nationalist
perspective there cannot be a Macedonian nation since there has never been
an independent Macedonian state: the Macedonian nation is an "artificial
creation," an "invention," of Tito, who "baptized" a "mosaic of nationalities"
with the Greek name "Macedonians."

Similarly Greek nationalists claim that because the
language spoken by the ancient Macedonians was Greek, the Slavic language
spoken by the "Skopians" cannot be called "the Macedonian language." Greek
sources generally refer to it as "the linguistic idiom of Skopje" and describe
it as a corrupt and impoverished dialect of Bulgarian. Finally, the Greek
government denies the existence of a Macedonian minority in northern Greece,
claiming that there exists only a small group of "Slavophone Hellenes"
or "bilingual Greeks," who speak Greek and "a local Slavic dialect" but
have a "Greek national consciousness" (Kofos 1964:226).

From the Greek nationalist perspective, then, the
use of the name "Macedonian" by the "Slavs of Skopje" constitutes a "felony,"
an "act of plagiarism" against the Greek people. By calling themselves
"Macedonians" the Slavs are "stealing" a Greek name; they are "embezzling"
Greek cultural heritage; they are "falsifying" Greek history. As Evangelos
Kofos, a historian employed by the Greek Foreign Ministry told a foreign
reporter, "It is as if a robber came into my house and stole my most precious
jewels - my history, my culture, my identity" (The Boston Globe Jan. 5,
1993, p.9). Greek fears that use of the name "Macedonia" by Slavs will
inevitably lead to the assertion of irredentist claims to territory in
Greek Macedonia are heightened by fairly recent historical events. During
World War II Bulgaria occupied portions of northern Greece, while one of
the specific goals of the founders of the People's Republic of Macedonia
in 1944 was "the unification of the entire Macedonian nation," to be achieved
by "the liberation of the other two segments" of Macedonia (Andonov--Poljanski
1985 Vol 2:607).

Macedonians, on the other hand, are committed to
affirming their existence as a unique people with a unique history, culture,
and identity, and to gaining recognition of this fact internationally.
In asserting what they sometimes refer to as their "ethnospecificity" Macedonians
insist they are not Serbs, Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, or Greeks. They also
reject hyphenated names such as Yugoslav-Macedonian or Greek-Macedonian
as "divisive labels" indicative of a "partition mentality" that needs to
be overcome. There are no Slav -Macedonians, either, anymore than there
are Slav-Russians or Slav-Poles. According to many Macedonians, Greeks
and Bulgarians who live in Macedonia (whose nationality is Greek or Bulgarian)
may identify themselves as "Macedonians," but in a regional or geographical
sense only.

Extreme Macedonian nationalists, who are concerned
with demonstrating the continuity between ancient and modern Macedonians,
deny that they are Slavs and claim to be the direct descendants of Alexander
the Great and the ancient Macedonians. The more moderate Macedonian position,
generally adopted by better educated Macedonians and publicly endorsed
by Kiro Gligorov, the first president of the newly independent Republic
of Macedonia, is that modern Macedonians have no relation to Alexander
the Great, but are a Slavic people whose ancestors arrived in Macedonia
in the sixth century AD. Proponents of both the extreme and the moderate
Macedonian positions stress that the ancient Macedonians were a distinct
non-Greek people.

In addition to affirming the existence of the Macedonian
nation, Macedonians are concerned with affirming the existence of a unique
Macedonian language as well. While acknowledging the similarities between
Macedonian and other South Slavic languages, they point to the distinctions
that set it apart as a separate language. They also emphasize that although
standard literary Macedonian was only formally created and recognized in
1944, the Macedonian language has a history of over a thousand years dating
back to the Old Church Slavonic used by Sts. Cyril and Methodius in the
ninth century.

Although all Macedonians agree that Macedonian minorities
exist in Bulgaria and Greece and that these minorities have been subjected
to harsh policies of forced assimilation, there are two different positions
with regard to what their future should be. The goal of more extreme Macedonian
nationalists is to create a "free, united, and independent Macedonia" by
"liberating" the parts of Macedonia "temporarily occupied" by Bulgaria
and Greece. More moderate Macedonian nationalists recognize the inviolability
of the Bulgarian and Greek borders and explicitly renounce any territorial
claims against the two countries. They do, however, demand that Bulgaria
and Greece recognize the existence of Macedonian minorities in their countries
and grant them the basic human rights they deserve.[9]

Greeks and Macedonians in Multicultural Australia

Since the end of World War II immigration has dramatically
transformed the nature of Australian society. In 1947 Australia's population
stood at just under seven million people, 90% of whom were English-speaking
and Australian-born. With the arrival of over four million immigrants during
the next forty years Australian society became one of the most ethnically
diverse in the world. By 1988, the year it celebrated its bi-centenary,
Australia had a population of over sixteen million people who came from
more than 100 different ethnic groups. Over 20% of its population were
immigrants, and 20% more were Australian-born children of at least one
immigrant parent.

Until the early 1970s Australia's immigration program
was dominated by a "White Australia Policy" and a firm commitment to the
doctrine of assimilation. The goal of this program was to insure that Australia
remained a homogeneous, English-speaking society dominated by an "Anglo-Celtic"
majority. In the early 1970s, however, the Labor government of Prime Minister
Gough Whitlam adopted an explicit policy of multiculturalism, a policy
of cultural pluralism based on two fundamental principles: "the recognition
and affirmation of the diverse cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds
of the Australian people, and the promotion of equality of opportunity
for all Australians regardless of their backgrounds" (Jupp 1988:926).

This shift in policy constituted an implicit recognition
of the basic demographic facts of Australia's immigration history. Not
only had assimilation not occurred, but members of cultural and linguistic
minorities had failed to achieve a significant degree of upward social
mobility. The adoption of a multicultural policy also implied an awareness
that assimilation was an unrealistic policy and that cultural pluralism
did not in fact present a real threat to the cohesion of Australian society.
The ultimate goal, then, of Australian multiculturalism was the creation
of national unity while at the same maintaining the diversity and complexity
of a polyethnic society.

The rise of multiculturalism as the dominant ideology
governing many aspects of Australian society was motivated in part by the
increasing assertiveness of second and third generation "ethnic Australians."
This new attitude led to the growth of ethnic community organizations and
migrant groups which in turn made significant demands on the Australian
government at both the state and federal levels to provide "new Australians"
with improved social services particularly in the areas of education and
welfare. As a result the principle that interest groups based on the ethnic
identity of their members were legitimate elements in the formulation and
administration of government policies gained widespread acceptance. [10]

In many ways the multicultural nature of Australian
society is epitomized by the city of Melbourne, the capital of the state
of Victoria, located in south-eastern Australia on the Yarra river at the
head of Port Philip Bay. Melbourne, with a population of 3.2 million people,
is the second largest city in Australia, as well as the most heavily industrialized.
While overall 25% of Melbourne's population is "overseas-born," in some
working-class areas of the city this percentage rises to 40%. When the
children of the "overseas born" are included, these percentages double.
Almost 75% of the "overseas-born" in Melbourne are from Europe, while approximately
20% of the total population of the city speak a language other than English
in the home.[11]

According to the 1986 census 337,000 people in Australia
stated that they were of Greek ancestry, and 148,000 of them (44%) lived
in Victoria. Of the 138,000 people in Australia who listed Greece as their
birthplace 66,000 lived in Melbourne. According to the same census, of
the 277,000 who stated that they spoke Greek at home, 113,000 lived in
Melbourne.[12] Greek is spoken by more Australians than
all other languages except English and Italian.

In the 1970s the Greek population of Melbourne was
concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods such as Northcote, South Melbourne,
and Richmond. By the late 1980s, however, many Greeks had moved to middle-distance
and outer metropolitan suburbs such as Preston, Thomastown, and Lalor.
While Greeks in general remained employed in low-skilled jobs in manufacturing
and in the retail trades, many second generation Greeks have experienced
a significant degree of upward social mobility.

The Greek community of Melbourne is one of the largest
in the entire Greek diaspora; it is also one of the most visible and active
ethnic communities in a city renowned for its cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism.
At the heart of the Greek community of Melbourne are 36 Greek Orthodox
Churches and over 100 clubs, societies, and associations that are based
on place of origin in Greece. There are also a multitude of women's groups,
youth groups, and pensioners' clubs, as well as many athletic, philanthropic,
cultural, political, and professional organizations. Modern Greek is taught
in 25 elementary schools and 30 secondary schools in Melbourne and in all
four universities in the city. In addition, the Greek community of Melbourne
has a large, well-organized system of private ethnic schools. It is also
served by several Greek newspapers and several private Greek radio stations.
Finally, the Greek Consulate General in Melbourne, with its Office of Press
and Information and its Educational Advisor, plays a prominent role in
the affairs of the Greek community there. [13]

According to the estimate of the ethnic composition
of the Australian population prepared for the Bicentenary in 1988 (Jupp
1988:124), there are 75,000 people of Macedonian ethnic origin in Australia,
46,000 of whom are thought to have come from the Republic of Macedonia
in the former Yugoslavia, 28,000 to have come from Greece, and 1,000 from
Bulgaria. In an essay on the Macedonians prepared for the Jupp volume,
Peter Hill estimates that there may actually be as many as 100,000 people
of Macedonian ancestry in Australia (1988:691).

Census data on the Macedonian community of Australia
are extremely unreliable for several reasons. Until recently Australian
census forms asked people simply to list "country of origin" for themselves
and their parents. People who identified themselves as Macedonians, therefore,
appeared in the Australian census data as "Bulgarian-born," "Yugoslav-born,"
or "Greek-born." In the 1986 census people were asked for the first time
to state their "ancestry," defined in an information booklet accompanying
the census forms as "the ethnic or national group from which you are descended."
At this time 42,000 people in Australia listed their ancestry as Macedonian.
21,000 of them were born in Yugolsavia, 4,000 of them were born in Greece,
while the rest of them were born in Australian. Almost half of the people
of Macedonian ancestry in Australia lived in Victoria, the vast majority
of them in Melbourne. According to the 1986 census there were 46,000 people
in Australia who spoke Macedonian at home, 21,000 of whom lived in Melbourne.[14]

The Macedonian community of Melbourne is similar
to its Greek counterpart in many ways. It is, however, significantly smaller
in size. There are only 4 Macedonian churches in Melbourne; Macedonian
is taught at only five primary schools, six high schools and at none of
the universities in Melbourne; and there are no private ethnic schools
run by the Macedonian community. Furthermore, because it has a much smaller
educated and professional elite than the Greek community, and because there
is no Macedonian consulate to support its activities, the Macedonian community
of Melbourne plays a much less influential role in the cultural and political
life of the city.

While the Greek community is divided in many ways,
the Macedonian community is even more divided. The major division in the
Macedonian community is that between immigrants from Yugoslav (or Vardar)
Macedonia and immigrants from Greek (or Aegean) Macedonia. Because many
Aegean Macedonians arrived in Australia in the 1950s, while the largest
number of of Vardar Macedonians emigrated to Australia in the late 1960s,
the Aegean Macedonian community is better established in Melbourne -- its
members speak better English and have enjoyed more upwardly mobility. In
addition, the two communities have different geographical centers. The
majority of Aegean Macedonians in Melbourne live in the northern suburbs
of Preston, Thomastown, Lalor, and Epping, while the Vardar Macedonians
of Melbourne are concentrated in the western suburbs of Footscray, Sunshine,
Altona and Keilor.[15]

This description of the Greek and the Macedonian
communities of Australia has been presented as an account two dichotomous
and mutually exclusive national groups -- Greeks and Macedonians. Such
an account, however, replicates and perpetuates the hegemonic constructions
of both Australian multicultural discourse and Balkan nationalist discourse.
In doing so it obscures the fact that there exists a group of people from
the region of Florina and from other areas of northern Greece, who speak
both Greek and Macedonian, who share one common regional or ethnic identity,
that of "local Macedonians," but who have been divided into two hostile
factions, each of which has adopted a different national identity. These
are the people whose lives have been most dramatically affected by the
recent politicization of the Macedonian Question. Individual villages and
families have been split, with one villager, one brother, identifying as
a Greek, the other as a Macedonian.

In many cases the choices made and the postions taken
in the present have parallels in the past. There are also, of course, many
cases where new choices are made and new identities constructed. Some migrants
to Melbourne who identify themselves as Greeks have seen their children
grow up and come to identify themselves as Macedonians.

There are many factors that influence the process
of identity formation as it takes place among immigrants from Florina to
Australia. Balkan history, village politics, family situation, and individual
biography all play important parts in this complex process. People may
identify themselves as Greeks for a variety of reasons. They may come from
a village that supported the Patriarch in the early twentieth century or
a family that supported the Greek government during the Civil War. They
may come from a wealthy family or have grown up in the city of Florina
itself, or they may simply have been the youngest child in the family and
grown up speaking Greek in the home because their older brothers and sisters
had already started school. They may have left Greece as adults, having
been fully socialized into Greek national society as a result of completing
high school or serving in the military. Alternatively they may be involved
in a profession that can be practiced more readily in the Greek community
of Melbourne with its large private educational system and its well-established
professional and business elite. They may also have married into a family
with strong sense of Greek national identity. Finally, they may be afraid
that if they publicly identify themselves as Macedonians, they may not
be able to return to Greece or that their relatives still living in Greece
may be harassed by Greek government officials. One person, for example,
refused to discuss the Macedonian issue with me, saying "It's too political,
too dangerous. I don't want to talk. The people in the Pan-Macedonian Association
might find out what I said, and I'd get in trouble."

People from Florina may identify as Macedonians for
a variety of reasons as well. They may come from a village that supported
the Exarch in the early twentieth century or a family that supported the
communists during the Civil War. They may have been born in a small, poor
village inhabited exclusively by local Macedonians, or they may have been
the oldest child in the family and grown up speaking Macedonian with their
parents and grandparents. Alternatively, they may have left Greece for
Australia at a very young age and may not have been fully socialized into
Greek national society, but only into the "local" society of their family
and village. People who left Greece after the Civil War, settled in Yugoslavia
or some other Eastern European country, and then emigrated to Australia
from there, are almost certain to have adopted a Macedonian national identity.
People who remained in Greece, but who experienced harassment and persecution
at the hands of the Greek government in the years following the Civil War,
may also have developed a Macedonian identity. Finally, people who marry
into a family with a strong Macedonian identity or who have no relatives
still living in Greece are likely to develop a Macedonian identity as well.

Some local Macedonians from Florina living in Australia
have adopted a third stance with regard to the question of national identity.
They attempt to maintain a neutral stance in the conflict between Greeks
and Macedonians by refusing to identify themselves publicly with either
one of the two mutually exclusive national groups. In many cases they want
to preserve the unity of their village organizations which provide them
with their primary sense of identity; in some cases they may value both
national cultures and not want to restrict themselves by identifying themselves
exclusively with either one. Finally, they may be genuinely unable to choose
either one of the two mutually exclusive national categories to identify
themselves with. On several occasions people who had adopted this third
position refused to discuss the Macedonian issue with me. When I asked
a man I met at a village picnic if he were a Greek dr a Macedonian, he
said "I can't talk. I can't say anything. [16] Then he
gestured to the people dancing a "local" dance on the cricket field in
front of us and said 'These are my people; this is my village. That's all
I can say.

Since the local Macedonians of the Florina region
were generally poor farmers from small villages, they emigrated to Australia
in large numbers. like other immigrants from Greece, Yugoslavia, and southern
Europe more generally, they often settled in jhe cities of Perth, Adelaide,
Sydney, and Melbourne. Those who arrived in Melbourne in the 1950s. settled
in the inner city suburbs of Northcote, Richmond, and Fitzroy only to move
out to the northern suburbs of Preston, Thomastown, Lalor, and Epping in
the 1960s and 1970s.

The institutions founded by the early local Macedonian
immigrants from Florina to Melbourne testify to the divisions in their
community that have been created in large part by the different national
ideologies that have competed for their loyalty over the past century.
This is particularly true in the case of the church, the institution that
lies at the center of many southern and eastern European diaspora communities.
In 1950 a group of immigrants from Florina, who identified themselves as
Macedonians and who opposed communism, founded a "Macedonian Church of
Saints Cyril and Methodius' in affiliation with the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church of North and South America and Australia (which at that time was
independent of the Holy Synod in Sofia). Years later, however, after the
reconciliation of the diaspora church and the Holy Synod in Sofia, a priest
from Bulgaria was sent to Melbourne who insisted that the Church of Saints
Cyril and Methodius was a Bulgarian Church and that its members were all
Bulgarians. In 1985 the trustees of the church, who identified themselves
as Macedonians, renounced the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Orthodox Chruch
and attempted to gain control of the church. The Supreme Court of Victoria,
however, ruled against them, and the Macedonian community soon abandoned
what had now become a Bulgarian church.

Another group of immigrants from Florina who also
identified themselves as Macedonians, but who supported communism, founded
the Macedonian Orthodox Church of St. George in 1959, which eventually
became afffliated with the Macedonian Orthodox Church in the Republic of
Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia. This church is now one of the most
powerful institutions in the Macedonian community of Melbourne and in all
of
Australia. Finally, in 1967, a third group of immigrants from Florina,
a group who identified themselves as Greeks, established a Greek Orthodox
Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Thus the tripartite division of Macedonia
among Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece is replicated in the different affiliations
of the churches founded by immigrants from Florina who settled in Melbourne.

Rough estimates suggest that there may be 27,000
people from the district of Florina who are now living in Australia.16
According to a survey conducted by Hill (1989:125) there are over 10,000
people in Melbourne whose families come from a group of 14 villages in
the Florina area which have large and active village associations in Melbourne.
In addition, immigrants from the city of Florina itself and from about
ten other villages in the region have also settled in Melbourne. It is
quite possible, therefore, that there are as many as 15,000 people from
the Florina area who are living in Melbourne heavily concentrated in the
northern suburbs of the city.

Indigenous Theories of Identity

In the early 1990s the attention of the Greek and the
Macedonian communities of Australia was focused on the Macedonian conflict.
The most burning issues confronting the two communities were the struggle
of the Republic of Macedonia to gain international recognition under its
constitutional name and the parallel, but somewhat less immediate, struggle
of Aegean Macedonians to gain recognition from the Greek government as
an ethnic or national minority. During this time conversations among Greeks
and Macedonians in Melbourne inevitably turned to questions of identity.
At weddings, soccer games, village dances and picnics they argued passionately
and endlessly about whether they were Greeks or Macedonians, about what
makes a person Greek or Macedonian, and about how people could ever know
what a person's nationality really was.

Peter Savramis is a Macedonian, not a Greek.[17]
He left his village near Florina and came to Melbourne in the early 1970s.
Peter takes great delight in arguing with people in Greek, Macedonian,
and English about the Macedonian question. He prides himself on being able
to present his position articulately, convincingly, and without getting
in a fight. George often talks about the Macedonian conflict at construction
sites around the city where he works installing heating and air conditioning
systems.

One day in the fall of 1991 an Italian contractor
introduced Peter to Kostas, a Greek carpenter who would be working with
him on a new house.

"Where are you from?" asked Kostas in Greek. "Are you one of the ones
who wants to take our land?"

"Wait a minute," Peter said. "I'm a Macedonian. What
land are you talking about? I'm from Macedonia, Macedonia of the Aegean."

'You speak good Greek!" said Kostas, somewhat surprised.

'Yes," said Peter. "I speak pure Greek. I learned it in school."

'You're a Greek-Macedonian," said Kostas.

"No! I'm a Macedonian." replied Peter.

Kostas was starting to get angry. "But you can't understand those Yugoslavs
who want to take our land."

"When it comes to language," Peter explained, "a Macedonian from Greece
and a Macedonian from Yugoslavia can understand each other perfectly. They
speak the same language."

"Why does it bother you if I'm Macedonian?" asked Peter. "Are you Greek?"

'Yes."

"If I said that you weren't Greek, wouldn't you tell me to get stuffed?"

'Yes."

"It's the same for me. If you say I'm not a Macedonian, I'll tell you
to go get stuffed."

"But you're a Greek-Macedonian," insisted Kostas again.

"I'm a Greek citizen," said Peter, "but I'm a Macedonian by birth. You
could have an Australian passport, but by birth what are you?"

"A Greek," replied Kostas.

"It's the same with me," said Peter. "I'm Macedonian by birth. If a
hundred years ago they divided up Greece, and Italy and Bulgaria and Thrkey
each took a part, what would you be?"

"I'd still be a Greek," replied Kostas.

"That's right," said Peter, shaking Kostas' hand. "And I'm still a Macedonian.
I am what I am, and you are what you are. If you say I'm not a Macedonian,
then I'll say you're not a Greek."

An analysis of the indigenous theories of identity
that underlay arguments like this confirms the value of David Schneider's
(1968, 1969 and 1984) discussion of blood and law as two of the most powerful
symbols used to express the unity of a group of people who share a common
identity, whether in the domain of kinship, religion, or nationality. According
to Schneider, blood is regarded as a "natural substance," a "shared biogenetic
material." It is a biological essence, an objective fact of nature, that
is given at birth and that is often thought to constitute a permanent and
unalterable aspect of a person's identity. By contrast, another aspect
of a person's identity is that determined by law, by what Schneider calls
"a code for conduct," that is, a specific social relationship which is
dependent for its continued existence on the performance of a particular
social role (1968:21-29). It is understood that this aspect of a person's
identity is neither natural nor permanent, but that it can either be changed
or terminated. In the conversations of immigrants from Florina to Melbourne
either of these two powerful symbols may serve as a criterion for determining
a person's identity.

According to both Greek and Macedonian nationalist
perspectives national identity is something that is naturally and biologically
given. It is determined first and foremost by "blood" or by "birth." This
biologized conception of national identity is expressed both explicitly
and metaphorically. A person of Greek nationality is "Greek by birth" (Ellinas
to yenos). Similarly a man from Florina who identifies himself as a Macedonian
and not a Greek said "No one buys his nationality; no one chooses his mother.
I inherited this nationality. It is my inheritance, the milk of my mother."[18]

Metaphors identifying the personified national homeland
as parent also support this biologized conception of national identity.
Greece is often referred to Greece as the "mother fatherland," while Macedonia
is often referred to both as "mother Macedonia" and as the "fatherland"
Macedonian nationalists frequently use biological metaphors equating the
category of national identity with the category of biological species.
When people from Florina who identify as Macedonians deny the legitimacy
of the identity of their relatives and fellow villagers who identify as
Greeks, they use images suggesting the immutability of biological species:
"Wheat is wheat, and corn is corn. You can't change one into the other.
Even if you call it corn, it's still wheat.. Its nature doesn't change."
As another Macedonian from Florina put it, "A maple tree is a maple tree.
You can't inject oak tree into it." Macedonian nationalists often explain
the incompatibility of Greeks and Macedonians by way of a proverb that
also draws on the analogy between nationality and biological species. In
commenting on the long history of conflict and hostility between Greeks
and Macedonians, they say "sheep and goats don't mix."

People from Florina who identify themselves as Macedonians
and not Greeks argue that all Slavic-speaking people in northern Greece
are "really" Macedonians and not Greeks because their "mother tongue" is
Macedonian and not Greek. They contrast the "natural" environment in which
they learned Macedonian - at home, in the family, speaking with their parents
and grandparents - with the "artificial" environment of the educational
system in which they learned Greek. "Real Greeks," they say, "don't have
grandparents who speak Macedonian." They also attempt to undermine the
legitimacy of the Greek national identity of people who speak Macedonian
by making fun of them when they say in Macedonian "We are Greeks" (Nie
sne Grci) or "We Greeks are clever" (Nie Grci sne eksipni).[19]
From a Macedonian and even a Greek nationalist perspective such people
may seem incongruous, their nationality suspect. From an anthropological
perspective in which identity is a matter of self ascription, however,
the claims to Greek national identity of people who were born in Greece
but speak Macedonian and not Greek are just as legitimate as the claims
to Macedonian national identity of people who earlier in their lives identified
themselves as Greeks.

The contrast between a person's "genuine" national
identity, which is biologically given at birth, and a person's "artificial"
national identity, which is acquired somehow later in life is conveyed
by a humorous, if somewhat bitter, comment overheard by a Macedonian from
Melbourne while visiting the village near Florina where he was born. A
woman from southern Greece who had married a Slavic-speaking local Macedonian
from the village told some men who had gathered in the village cafe that
they were not "real Greeks." An old man, a local Macedonian, replied "That's
right. You are a Greek with hormones. We are Greeks by injection."[20]

While the idea that national identity is a natural,
biological given is a basic tenet of both Greek and Macedonian nationalist
ideologies, in arguments among people from Florina over whether they are
really Greeks or Macedonians, this position is most often taken by people
who identify themselves as Macedonians. People who identify themselves
as Greeks, on the other hand, are much more likely to argue that national
identity is determined by what Schneider has called "a code for conduct,"
that is, a particular relationship with the Greek state which people enter
into as they are socialized into Greek society. Through this process of
socialization people develop a commitment to the Greek state as well as
a sense of being part of the Greek nation. From this perspective, being
a part of Greek society and participating in Greek culture mean that one
is a member of the Greek nation. Given the identity of the Greek state
and the Greek nation, the legal relationship between a Greek citizen and
the Greek state, which involves the performance of a particular social
role, is equated with membership in the Greek nation. People who are Greek
citizens, in other words, must have a Greek national identity; people who
were raised in Greek society must be Greek.[21]

Immigrants from Florina to Melbourne who identify
themselves as Greeks frequently argue that their relatives and fellow villagers
who identify as Macedonians cannot "really" be Macedonians on the grounds
that there has never been a Macedonian state. When a Greek tells a Macedonian
'You can't be a Macedonian because there's no such country (kratos)," he
implies that because there is no Macedonian state as a legal entity and
no Macedonian citizenship as a legal relationship, there can be no Macedonian
nation and no Macedonian national identity. This argument, of course, ignores
the fact that nations can and do exist which have no states to serve as
national homelands (the Palestinians and the Kurds are two obvious examples),
as well as the fact that the Republic of Macedonia has existed as one of
the republics of the former Yugoslavia with its own government, educational
system, flag, and nationality since 1944. It also ignores the fact that
in 1991 the Republic of Macedonia declared its existence as an independent
and sovereign state. Given the identity of state and nation in Greek nationalist
ideology, Greece's refusal to recognize the Republic of Macedonia as an
independent state can be seen as the equivalent of refusing to recognize
the existence of the Macedonians as a distinct nation.

The Greek nationalist argument is more straightforward
when it comes to denying the possibility that people from Florina, people
who were born and raised in Greece, could have a Macedonian national identity.
They must have a Greek national identity. A man from Florina who identified
himself as Greek defended himself by saying: "I was born under Greece,
I went to school under Greece, I believe Greek, and I'll never change."
In an attempt to put an end to a long and frustrating discussion, another
man said "We're from Greece, so we're Greek. Let's just forget it."

More specifically people with a Greek national identity
often argue that because many people from Florina who identify themselves
as Macedonians have Greek, not Macedonian, names; because they attend the
Greek, not the Macedonian, church; because they are literate in Greek,
not Macedonian, and most importantly because they all have Greek, not Macedonian,
passports; they must therefore be Greeks. Macedonians, however, refute
these arguments by pointing out that many Aegean Macedonians have Greek
names and are literate in Greek because of the assimilationist policies
of the Greek government. They also point out that Aegean Macedonians have
Greek passports because they are Greek citizens, emphasizing once again
that citizenship does not determine ethnic or national identity.

When confronted with the Greek argument that because
they came to Australia on Greek passports they were therefore Greeks, many
people from Florina who identify themselves as Macedonians simply say "No.
We're Macedonians with Greek passports." More argumentative Macedonians
often reply 'You say that we're Greeks because we were born under Greek
rule. Does that mean that your grandfather was Turkish because he was born
under Turkish rule?"

The relevance of Schneider's analysis of the symbols
of blood and law to the present discussion of the construction of national
identity among local Macedonian immigrants from Florina is clear from the
analogies often drawn between trying to determine what a persons "real"
national identity is and who a person's "real" mother is. At a village
picnic in Mebourne Sam, a man from a village near Florina who identifies
himself as a Greek, said "My blood is Macedonian. My real mother is Macedonian.
But my adoptive mother is Greece. And you can't spit in the face of your
adoptive mother." Faced with a clear choice, metaphorically speaking, between
a relative to whom he was related by blood and one to whom he was related
by law, Sam chose to place greater emphasis on the legal relationship and
to remain loyal to his adoptive mother. In this way he explained the fact
that he had a Greek national identity.

Ted, who was also from a village near Florina, but
who identifies himself as a Macedonian and not a Greek, used the same metaphor,
the metaphor of adoption, to explain how as an adult he had realized that
he was actually a Macedonian, even though he had lived all his life as
a Greek. "I felt like an adopted child who had just discovered his real
parents," he said. "All my life had been a lie. I'd been a janissary.[22]
I'd betrayed my own people." Ted, unlike Sam, however, chose metaphorically
to privilege his relationship with his biological parents. In this way
he justified his newly discovered Macedonian national identity.

As these two examples illustrate, immigrants from
Florina can decide whether they are Greeks or Macedonians either by invoking
the existence of a "blood" tie or by invoking the existence of a social
relationship. National identity, in this case, therefore, is a matter of
choice, a matter of self-identification or self-ascription. Immigrants
from Florina recognize the role of conscious choice and individual decision
making in their discussions of national identity, but only to a degree.
They talk about people with a Greek national identity as people who "want"
or "believe in" Greece. Conversely they refer to people who have a Macedonian
national identity as people who "want" or "believe in" Skopje. People who
identify as Greeks or Macedonians are also described as being "on the Greek
side" or on the Macedonian side;" as belonging to one "political faction"
(Darataksi) or the other. This terminology suggests that whether immigrants
from Florina identify themselves as Greeks or Macedonians is a matter of
conscious political choice. People are Greeks or Macedonians because they
choose to be Greeks or Maceddnians.

Macedonians who are involved in the Macedonian human
rights movement in Australia are the most likely to acknowledge that national
identity is a matter of self-ascription. They have been influenced both
by the the discourse of multiculturalism in Australia, where ethnic identity
is specifically stated to be a matter of self-identification, and by the
discourse of international human rights organizations such as th& United
Nations or the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where
membership in a national minority is considered to be a matter of individual
choice.[23] Such an approach to the issue of ethnic and
national identity (as opposed to the essentialist approach so characteristic
of most nationalist ideologies) clearly serves the interests of Macedonians
in their struggle to gain recognition as a nation on the international
scene and as an ethnic minority in Greece as well as in Australia.

In many cases, however, the acknowledgment of the
self-ascriptive nature of national identity is merely a token gesture of
respect, one which is all too readily abandoned in favor of a more essentialist
approach. A man involved in the Macedonian human rights movement in Melbourne
talked about a fellow villager who identified himself as Greek this way:
"I respect Tom for what he believes he is. He has the right to believe
in something, and he believes he's Greek. But he's really a Macedonian
like us." Another immigrant from Florina involved in the Macedonian human
rights movement described the underlying biologically-given Macedonian
national identity of a fellow villager who explicitly identified himself
as Greek as existing "inside his blood, without his wanting it."

People from Florina who identify themselves as Greeks
exhibit this same tendency to contrast people's beliefs, people's assertions
of what they are, on the one hand, with what they "really" are, on the
other. A woman who identified herself as Greek and who taught Greek at
a public elementary school in Melbourne expressed this contrast implicitly
when she said: "I know Greeks from Florina who say they're not Greek."
Her knowledge that they are Greeks somehow transcends in importance and
legitimacy their assertions that they are not Greek. Another immigrant
from Florina who identified himself as a Greek expressed the contrast this
way: 'You can change your consciousness (sinidhisi), but you can't change
what you really are. My son can have an Australian consciousness, but he
can't be an Australian. He can feel Australian, but he can't be one....
A person who went to Skopje after the Civil War can change consciousness.
Now he believes there; now he has a Slavic consciousness. But he can't
be a Macedonian. He's Greek."

Because all local Macedonians from Florina accept
the fact that they share the same regional or ethnic identity, they believe
that they all must also have the same national identity. People who have
a Macedonian national identity believe that all local Macedonians are Macedonians,
while people who have a Greek national identity believe that all local
Macedonians are Greeks. Members of both groups dismiss as mistaken and
illegitimate the self-ascribed identity of anyone who asserts an identity
different from their own.

Macedonians justify dismissing the self-ascribed
Greek national identity of their relatives and fellow villagers by arguing
that it is motivated by fear, that it is a product of the assimilationist
policies practiced by the Greek government since 1913. As one Macedonian
put it, "They were forced to become Greeks" (Me to zori evinan Ellines).
A leader of the Macedonian human rights movement in Melbourne said that
in an open society like Australia, where people can freely identify as
they wish, their self-ascribed national identity will correspond with their
biologically given national identity. When deliberate attempts have been
made to eradicate an ethnic group, however, then people's self-ascribed
national identity will not correspond with their biologically given national
identity. In such cases people's "real" identity is determined, not
by self-ascription, but by biology.

Greeks justify dismissing the self-ascribed Macedonian
national identity of people from Florina in a similar manner. They argue
that it is a conscious choice which in many cases is motivated by the pressure
tactics of local "Skopians" or by economic self-interest. However, a Macedonian
woman from Florina who completed her university studies in Melbourne explicitly
rejected the idea that her Macedonian identity was a matter of conscious
choice: "The Greeks are denying my people the right to be who they are,
not who they want to be. I don't choose to be Macedonian. I am Macedonian.
I'm Macedonian because I was born to the family I was and in the place
I was. I'm not Macedonian because of any political act of my own.' From
both the Greek and the Macedonian nationalist perspectives, therefore,
a 'person's self-ascribed national identity as a product of conscious choice
is generally rejected in favor of a reified conception of national identity
grounded in biology.

Because a person's national identity can be defined
as biologically determined or as acquired through a process of socialization,
and because a person's self-ascribed national identity (whether it is based
on biology or socialization) can either be accepted at face value or rejected
in favor of another identity based on the other principle, the question
of whether the Slavic-speaking people of northern Greece are Greeks or
Macedonians is ultimately contestable. People from Florina will continue
to argue about blood, place of birth, language, passports, consciousness,
and belief as criteria of national identity. Parents and children, husbands
and wives, brothers and sisters will continue to disagree about what they
really are.

At a village dance in Melbourne a man who identified
himself as Macedonian and not Greek. told me a story about two brothers
from a village near Florina. One had settled in Yugoslavia after the Civil
War; the other had remained in Greece. Eventually they both came to Australia
(one on a Yugoslav passport, the other on a Greek passport) where they
lived together with their mother in the same house in Melbourne. They were
constantly arguing with each other because one brother identified himself
as Greek while the other brother identified himself as Macedonian. Finally
they confronted their mother; they asked her how a woman could give birth
to one Greek and one Macedonian. The narrator of the story did not tell
me what the mother replied. Instead he offered his own answer to the question.
"It's not possible," he said emphatically. "By blood, by birth, they're
both Macedonians."

I am sure that if the narrator of the story had been
a Greek I would also have been told that it was not possible for a woman
to give birth to one Greek and one Macedonian, but I would have been told
that both brothers were Greek. As an anthropologist, however, I offer a
different answer to this question. I suggest that it Ls possible for a
woman to give birth to one Greek and one Macedonian. It is possible precisely
because Greeks and Macedonians are not born, they are made. National identities,
in other words, are not biologically given, they are socially constructed.

It is my hope that the detailed ethnographic material
presented here has demonstrated the complexity of the process of identity
formation as it takes place at the individual level among local Macedonian
immigrants from Florina to Melbourne. This same complexity characterizes
the lives and identities of Macedonians in other parts of the world, as
well as those of many other people who are members of ethnic minorities
and diaspora communities in today's transnational world. These people are
caught between mutually exclusive national identities. They are marginal
participants in several national cultures and full participants in none,
people who are struggling to construct a coherent sense of themselves from
a complex, multi-layered set of identities - class, religious, regional,
ethnic, and national. While these identities may coexist easily on some
occasions, they conflict sharply on others, and this conflict often brings
with it a great deal of uncertainty, alienation, and pain.

It is also my hope that the analysis presented here
has convincingly exposed the dangers of oversimplified nationalist ideologies
with their explanations of national identity in terms of some natural or
spiritual essence. In addition I hope it has exposed the weaknesses of
earlier anthropological approaches to the study of identity with their
arguments that people are members of ethnic or national groups because
they share some set of common cultural traits. Only by rejecting both these
approaches are we in a position to understand the complex historical, political,
social, and cultural processes by which individuals construct and negotiate
the identities that give meaning to their lives.

NOTES

1.The term "Macedonian" has three basic meanings. It
is used most frequently in this article and in general political, scholarly,
and journalistic discourse in a national sense to refer to people with
a Macedonian national identity. According to this usage, "Macedonian" and
"Greek" are mutually exclusive categories referring to people with two
different national identities. "Macedonian" is also used in a regional
sense to refer to people with a Greek national identity who come from Macedonia.
These people often refer to themselves as "Greek-Macedonians." Finally
the word "Macedonian" is also used with what I would call an ethnic meaning
to refer to the indigenous people of Macedonia (who may speak Greek or
Macedonian or both), in contrast to the many other ethnic groups that live
in northern Greece. For the sake of clarity, and because they also call
themselves "locals," I use the term "local Macedonians" to designate this
group.

2. Brass (1976:226), for example, states that "objective
cultural distinctions" are necessary conditions for the creation of different
ethnic or national groups.

3. On a situationalist approach to ethnicity see Okamura
1981 and Morin 1982). For an excellent study of the way local interests
influence the process of nation formation see Peter Salilins (1989) Boundaries:
The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees.

4. Gans (1991) has referred to this development as the
"emergence of symbolic ethnicity." See also Waters (1990).

5. For a valuable discussion of the process of identity
formation among transnational migrants in the late twentieth century see
Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton (1992).

6. On ethnicity and intolerance in Australian nationalist
ideology see Kapferer (1988).

7. For a Greek perspective on the Macedonian Question
see Kofos (1964 and 1989) and Martis (1983); for a Macedonian perspective
see Tashkovski (1976) and articles published in the Macedonian Review.
For other perspectives see Danforth (1993), Friedman (1975), Jelavich (1983),
Lunt (1984), Palmer and King (1971), and Wilkinson (1951).

8. The general consensus among ancient historians is
that in their own time the ancient Macedonians were perceived by Greeks
and by themselves not to be Greek. See Badian (1982), Borza (1990:96),
and Hammond (1986:535).

9. For statements of this moderate position see Karakasidou
(1993:13-14), Popov and Radin (1989:73), the response by the Foreign Minister
of the Republic of Macedonia to the Arbitration Commission of the Peace
Conference on Yugoslavia sponsored by the European Community, and the comments
of Macedonian human rights activists in northern Greece published in the
Greek periodical Ena March 11, 1992.

10. On the development of Australian multiculturalism
see Jupp (1988). Other useful sources include Ata (1986), Foster and Stockley
(1984 and 1988), Goodman et al. (1991), Jupp (1984) and Sesito (1982).
For important critiques of multiculturalism on the grounds that it involves
a trivialization or folklorization of the concept of culture, that its
emphasis on cultural differences ignores differences in class, socioeconomic

11. These statistics are from The Overseas-born
in Victoria (1991) published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

12. Bureau of Immigration Research (1990a:3 and 36,
and 1991:239) and Clyne (1991:42).

13. For additional information on the Greek community
in Australia see Bottomley (1979 and 1992), Loukakis (1981), Price (1975),
and Tamis (1994).

14. Bureau of Immigration Research (1990a:35 and 37,
and 1991:261) and Clyne (1991:37).

15. For additional information on the Macedonian Community
of Australia see Hill (1989).

16. Personal communication from the representative
of the district of Florina to the Greek parliament. The
population of the district of Florina itself has long remaiijed stable
at slightly more than 50,000 people.

17. All the personal names used in this paper are pseudonyms.
The narrative which follows is based on detailed notes taken during Peter
Savramis' account of the exchange.

18. On blood as a symbol of shared national identity
see Handler (1988:37), Herzfeld (1992:11 and 22-47), and Just (1989).

19. Eksinni (smart or clever) is a Greek word.

20. This self-deprecating comment underlining as it
does the legitimacy of the national identity of Slavic-speaking "local"
Macedonians who identify as Greeks is reminiscent of Kofos' (1989:259)
reference to Macedonians as people who have been "immunized with a 'Macedonian'
national ideology."

21. Defining national identity as a product of socialization
at the family level rather than at the state level some people from Florina
say: You are whatever your parents raise you to be."

22. A janissary was a Christian child taken at birth
from his family of origin and forced to convert to Islam and serve in the
guard of the Turkish sultan during the Ottoman period.

23. See, for example, the Final Document of the Copenhagen
Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe (1990).

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